On mission to increase economic freedom in the world through the crypto-economy, Coinbase aims to develop common infrastructure that is transparent, safe, secure, and benefits all participants. The open source community has provided critical support for Crypto development, with some support from donations from industry organizations and academic institutions.<\/p>\n
Crypto Community Fund was launched in 2020 to aid the community funding effort, and this year, up to $5M has been allocated through Coinbase Giving, to expand the program. Applications have officially been opened for 2022 developer grants focused on blockchain developers who contribute directly to a blockchain codebase or researchers producing white papers addressing (one or more of ) the following themes:<\/p>\n
Scalability and interoperability of blockchains<\/strong>: Scalability is a huge barrier to adoption. Current development varies between layer 2 protocols, and has different consensus mechanisms and layer 1 structures. While much of this work has high monetary value, this specifically looks to fund novel approaches and applications which are not so easily monetized (for example: rollups that originate in math\/graph theories).<\/p>\n Privacy, Identity, and Zero Knowledge research<\/strong>: Financial privacy is a critical and necessary development for a widespread, safe adoption of crypto. In a world where personal privacy is increasingly at risk, we recognize that the public and permanent broadcasting of transaction history can be concerning. We are open to any applications related to this area, but we are particularly interested in development related to composable privacy \u2014 privacy preservation which can be combined with smart contract ecosystems. For example, this may lend itself to academic zero knowledge research.<\/p>\n Protocol security, audit research, developer experience, and other foundational infrastructure<\/strong>: Projects which improve the foundational security of contracts, prevent exploits, and otherwise do the needful, inglorious, sometimes non-monetizable work.<\/p>\n Environmental footprint<\/strong>: Companies with innovative solutions to address\u00a0 generational challenge like energy-intensivity in mining<\/p>\n Wild card<\/strong>: Companies working on a foundational improvement and in search of funding<\/p>\n Eligibility and Preferences\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Applications are open to all blockchain\u00a0 developers and prospective developers to apply for a Crypto Community Fund grant here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some examples of previous recipients can be found here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n